


Vulcan Reorientation

by Gyptian



Series: Beyond Destruction [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Architecture in Space, Character Study, Gen, Kirk Family - Freeform, M/M, Male Friendship, Post-Star Trek Beyond, Pre-James T. Kirk/Spock, Wanderlust, Worldbuilding, Yorktown, emotional maturity is cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 13:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12321723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Space stations are weird and Yorktown doubly so. Kirk finds his groove again. Spock is maturing. Small things in a big universe that will shape the future.





	Vulcan Reorientation

**Author's Note:**

> A novel-length Post-Star Trek: Beyond fic is coming up. I've been wanting to write about that wooden bantering between our two soulmate friends and all the things in this universe moviemakers thought isn't sensational enough but I've been wandering about. The inspiration's been long coming. It'll be posted when it's finished. However, this is the prologue that can stand on its own and that would be deleted had I left it with the fic, since its scope is different. Enjoy.
> 
> The follow-up will take a turn for the romantic, this does not, hence the double notation.
> 
> Also, if there are volunteers for beta-ing a novel-length fic with no time pressure for either writer or beta, a chapter about every two to three weeks, that'd be great. My Grammarly checker keeps frowning at me and not just because I make up words for science fiction. (A plug-in that I recommend, by the way, good for emails too).

The Earth is flat. That is what most human brains tell their owners on an instinctual level as they move about the world. Paradoxically, it also tells them the Earth is endless. Confronted with the lip of a cliff, their brain tells them something is wrong. Kirk, Spock reflected, was an anomaly in more ways than one.

 

“ _A cliff, Captain?”_

 

“ _Yeah, well... most kids try to buck their parents' authority. I like to think I was a rebel of a higher order, trying to break the laws of nature.”_

 

Nevertheless, when trying to unite these concepts, they dismissed the Earth's endlessness in favour of its flatness, because one was easily visualised and the other was not. Or a realisation that a horizon indicated some curvature made them compromise: a curve to a surface provided both the flatness and the illusion of endlessness. Then it had been discovered that a sufficiently large globe produced both an infinite capacity to travel in any direction and an experience of flatness. Paradox solved, concepts assimilated.

 

“ _One does not break the laws of nature, Captain. Only understand them more accurately.”_

 

“ _Exactly! We're out in space, now, Spock, where I get to break the laws of nature by finding the inexplicable and then you get to remake them by finding a new explanation. Win-win.”_

 

Almost all species in the Federation started out with concepts of flatness and endlessness at some point in their history, resolving the same paradox as their understanding of the universe evolved. Such key common experiences were used to track development amongst pre-warp civilisations, to predict when First Contact would be appropriate.

 

Vulcans were an exception. They experienced endlessness, but not flatness. Whether it had been the prominence of an ever-present horizon on a desert planet that was the culprit, or that the irrational idea of flatness was utterly suppressed after Surak... that was unclear. However, a key point of Vulcan orientation when going planetside was to gaze upon the horizon, estimate the planet's curvature and then store that information for the next time they returned to the same planet. As well as a distinct preference for planets the size of Old Vulcan.

 

“ _We don't ever talk like this anymore, like we used to, remember, Mr Spock?”_

 

“ _What do you wish to speak of, Captain?”_

 

“ _...nevermind.”_

 

Space stations, sized somewhere between a ship and a planet, had to distribute their gravity as well as their space, so as to minimise the cost of creating the gravity and optimise the use of the space. Starfleet's utilitarian architects of the past had done both by simply taking the same precautions as on-planet. Secure people behind walls and balconies to reduce the sensation of falling. Minimise the curvature of floors and orient their gravity in the same direction as much as possible.

 

“ _Alright folks, word from your Captain, here. Orders from command are that all Starfleet personnel are expected to toe the line more so in the future than in the past. It's a... sensitive... time, now that we rebuild. We're to put our best foot forward. They've sent along the updated Starfleet Handbook, if anyone needs to review it, it's available in the library from your terminal as of now. Thank you, Mister Spock. And... well, we're the flagship, folks. I have faith in each and every one of my crew members. Kirk out.”_

 

Vulcans, ever practical, had taken artificial gravity as an opportunity to hang towers off of cliffs in their bigger cities, when they ran out of space to expand.

 

Humans, ever creative, had waited until budgets for space stations had grown and launched a new school of architecture, the Escheresque. Rather than avoid the sensation of falling, they flirted outrageously with this new dimension of experience. Starfleet's only condition was that same-gravitational-orientation spaces were large enough so that people got to look _away._

 

“ _Dammit, Spock, dammit all to hell. How dare they?”_

 

“ _Jim...”_

 

“ _Toe the line. Follow orders. Except their corrupt asses are above all that. Dammit, Spock. We're not cows and they aren't gods. How dare they?”_

 

“ _We cannot control them, only ourselves. I choose to follow those rules that I agree with and those orders my conscience allows.”_

 

“ _And what kind of orders is that, Spock? What esoteric criteria does a Vulcan use to select what is good and what's not?”_

 

“ _The source. And it is you, Jim, who is my Captain.”_

 

“ _...dammit, Spock.”_

 

And so, Yorktown's arms didn't just reach out from its core along one two-dimensional plane. Spaceships could be seen coming into the hangars beneath the streets rather than dock outside or in a separate or closed arm. It had see-through ceilings to an ever-starry sky rather than false daylight. Walking towards its core was an exercise in deliberate disorientation.

 

Spock stood upon the street on the Posh Arm, or command officers' sector. His eyes sought a horizon and never found it, producing a sensation near to floating that he carefully anchored to his telepathy's keening for a centre of orientation during his meditations. It would make it easier to accept New Vulcan if the association between _horizon_ and _home_ was already set.

 

A jangle of nerves beneath his skin, whenever he looked corewards, gave him an all-too-human error message. _Not flat._ It was... novel. The chaotic maelstrom of emotions he sorted at the start and end of each day made for unreliable evidence whether he was Vulcan or Human. His control... perhaps, though every Vulcan's control had become suspect in the wake of their planet's destruction. This, though. A recorded, constant, concrete distinction between Human and Vulcan psyches... the instinctual experience of flatness of the environment in spatial awareness.

 

“ _What half? If half of both, which half is which?”_

 

“ _I realise species designation is not so easily decided by dividing a person into parts, Captain.”_

 

“ _No, listen, seriously. Even thousands of years ago, this would've been an irrational proposition. On Vulcan AND on Earth.”_

 

Most people, human or otherwise, looked down on Yorktown. Only the bold lifted their eyes up.

 

At the start of their stay on Yorktown, the remodelling on the Enterprise-to-be just begun, Kirk could be found on a bench with a full view of the core, buildings growing from its arms at every angle. It had seatbelts if people felt too disoriented and wished to secure themselves.

 

Kirk brought several PADDS with work and pondered the view between filling out forms.

 

As the weeks rolled on, he'd shifted more and more towards the outer end of the arm. So that was where Spock's feet headed, clicking quietly on a near-deserted walkway once he'd passed the large building. He climbed over the low wall that separated the walkway from the very end, where, at right angles to both the residential sector and the hangar below, sat low seats that afforded a view of the stars in every direction except right below one's feet. Blond hair shone white and golden shirt almost grey when Kirk twisted to regard Spock with solemn eyes.

 

“ _Indeed. For years I have identified simply as Vulcan. However, my wish to acknowledge my mother has grown, of late. To... honour her memory.”_

 

“ _Well... D'you wish to know what humans made of it, the one and only time they really thought about it, rather than abuse such divisions for separating and discriminating against groups of people?”_

 

“ _Where did human logic lead?”_

 

“ _Hmm... the dilemma, they came together... cause this was crucial to a whole lot of 'em... famous guy... when a man was not just human but claimed two species, he wasn't said to be half of either, but wholly both... you can't separate out parts of a person and call them one or the other, so they took him as a whole and named him both, as he was.”_

 

“ _That is elegant. And... what other species was he?”_

 

“ _God.”_

 

“ _Illogical. I... I cannot...”_

 

“ _Your face! Stars and planets, Spock, think of some arguments to go with that outrage. I'm taking you to a Kirk Christmas dinner when we're on leave next and introducing you to my brother.”_

 

“ _Why?”_

 

“ _Because, Mr Spock, the results will be fascinating.”_

 

“Good evening, Spock,” Kirk said, rising so they could match shoulders and starbound gazes. “Our shake-down mission has come in.”

 

“Atypically early.”

 

“Well... some of our passengers will be coming in early, so we'll be hosts even before we board.” Kirk closed his eyes and bowed his head. He had grown less solemn during their leave here. Still, their friendship was not what it had once been. Spock was still learning to read his silences the way he had learned to understand the subtext of his chatter before... Before.

 

“I see. And where shall the journey take us before we are free to explore once more?”

 

Kirk's thirst for exploration had atrophied as their five-year mission progressed. Still, it was an old joke between them, and... And of late, a smile had been returning, small but growing with each iteration. Spock considered his patience up to the task of nurturing it back to full strength, now Kirk had rediscovered this part of himself. Even emotion, even instinctual drives had their constants and their worth.

 

“We are to New Vulcan, Mr Spock, before we go on... go on home.”

 

Kirk, it dawned on Spock, did not seek a horizon, but the stars. Wanted off the cliff, the ground, not to fall, but fly. Perhaps, perhaps... his mind trailed off as he lifted his own gaze to follow that of his Captain, into the black.

 

*~*

 

When Spock was finally ensconced at a table covered in red linen and tinsel, among collected Kirks and several friends, it was for Thanksgiving rather than Christmas.

 

A man that looked exactly like Jim would look a decade from now if he spent all that time outdoors and planetside regarded Spock. “You disagree with me. You think God doesn't exist.”

 

“Correct.” Spock felt... confined. Chairs were positioned close together and though a stray thought from brushing against Jim wasn't problematic, his being a familiar psychic presence, bumping into a near-to-dozing drunk Aunt Mathilda on the other side was less pleasant.

 

“And you have _reasons.”_ An impressive frown that Jim only used on incompetent cadets came down over formerly friendly brown eyes. “That you wish to _discuss.”_

 

“Correct.” A six-year-old down the table had been staring at him throughout the meal. Spock wished the boy would be distracted from this discussion.

 

A mouth was pinched almost grotesquely. A neck scratched in what was apparently a Kirkian family gesture.

 

A face magically cleared and hands clapped together. “Excellent. I'd _love_ to hear about it.”

 

Spock stared.

 

The six-year-old started to giggle, echoed, though two octaves lower, by an identical roll of laughter from beside Spock.

 

Spock's eyes jumped between all three.

 

The older Kirk brother – Sam or George, depending on who was asked – grinned at him as well.

 

“Was that statement sincere?” Spock finally asked. The man continued grinning but nodded.

 

The six-year-old, meanwhile, had restrained himself. Kirk had not.

 

Spock regarded him for one moment, considered one of Uhura's lectures about common human gestures, selected a glass of water and dumped it over Kirk's head, who squawked, flailed and fell on the floor behind his rickety stool, two socked feet visible above the table, which was met with an appreciative roar from all twelve guests.

 

Spock revelled in successfully provoking a larger reaction from his amused audience than Kirk and took a bite of yam while they calmed down so he could start a stimulating discussion.

 

 


End file.
